Today is the feast of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint, whom we New Yorkers claim for our own. Kateri was born in 1656 in what is now Auriesville, New York and died only 24 years later. The daughter of a Mohawk chief and an Algonquin mother, she became an orphan at age four when a smallpox epidemic claimed both her parents and her brother. Her short life was one of generosity and holiness, influenced by Jesuit missionaries and her own deep faith.

In our day, we have learned to celebrate the spirituality of Native peoples who understand more clearly than most inhabitants of our beautiful land that we are not here to take advantage of the natural world but rather to protect and honor it. As Chief Seattle wrote, “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect…”

Today would be a good day to pray in gratitude for the gifts of the natural world and for those who work to protect it. A question to consider in our reflection might include our assessment of ourselves as environmentalists. Do I walk softly on the earth, trying never to disturb the balance of nature? Am I aware of my “carbon footprint” and taking steps to reduce it? Do I recycle and work to keep our waterways pure? The list goes on…How can we be kinder to our Mother Earth, each of us doing our part?

This early rising time – 5:20 again this morning – seems a throwback to when I was first in the convent! At issue now, however, is the fact that I wake up at this time after only five or six hours of sleep (when my “normal” is eight) and am not able to go back for more rest, which has serious consequences later in the day. With my coffee just now I decided to make a list of important things not to forget for today and tomorrow. No wonder I’ve already entered a mental marathon! Within about three minutes I had 25 things on my list! They aren’t all very time-consuming, but still…

I read a few lines from Joan Chittister when I finally gave in to the dawning of day. I was reminded immediately of the importance of prayer and reading to Benedictine spirituality and the rule that she says “does not call for either great works or great denial. It simply calls for connectedness…with God, with others and with our inmost selves. It (the Rule) is for ordinary people who live ordinary lives.” But it calls us to attention and awareness.

That’s why I need my list. Lately I feel as if I have let the weather determine my activities and see the hours slipping away in lassitude. A little discipline is good for the soul. So here I am – determined enough to regroup and take my list in hand, willing to admit my shortcomings to the world in order that I might get back to a deeper connectedness and well-ordered living.

I often think that “Labor Day” must be a confusing holiday for people who are not native to our country or anywhere else that it is celebrated at some point in the year. Some of us have taken to calling it “Non-labor Day” since it is, after all, a day when everyone but essential workers stay home or go on picnics or celebrate in other such ways a “day off” from work.

In the United States, Labor Day is always the first Monday in September. It is, the internet says, a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our country. It became a federal holiday in 1894.

The ideal of “a good day’s work for a good day’s pay” has become rather skewed in many quarters in our country as we see inequity in many places where CEOs of big companies are paid exorbitant salaries while people like health aides are paid little more than minimum wage for their caring service to the sick and elderly members of our society. We need to work continually for just wages in every sphere and celebrate new initiatives where we see young executives sharing their wealth with their employees and many of the richest people establishing foundations with specific projects that seek the betterment of our world.

I took a look at Joan Chittister’s chapter entitled “Work: Participation in Creation” in her book, Wisdom Distilled From the Daily, just to get another, maybe more spiritual, perspective on the topic. Here are some tidbits that might be helpful as we attempt to balance our view on things.

Work in the monastic tradition is not something to be avoided. Work is not a punishment or a penance. Work is a privilege.

In monastic spirituality…work is not a private enterprise. Work is not to enable me to get ahead; the purpose of work is to enable me to get more human and to make my world more just. (I like that one!)

Genesis is very clear on the subject. “Then God took Adam,” Scripture says, “and put him in the garden to cultivate and care for it.” (GEN. 2:15). Adam was put in the garden to till it and to keep it, not to contemplate it; not to live off of it; not to lounge. Even in an ideal world, it seems, God expected us to participate in the co-creation of the world.

So here’s to those who provide meaningful work and good environments for their workers! Here’s to those who give of themselves for the good of society and their own growth and well-being! And here’s to those whose work is for justice for all, especially the under-served among us. May we all come to understand the connectedness that we share in the building up of the world, God’s sacred creation.

Last evening we began our first “Wisdom School” of 2017 here at the Spiritual Center. It is different from past events in that at least half of the people came as strangers to us. Usually at least one of the three team leaders has met everyone. It was a wonderful gathering with lots of willingness on everyone’s part to participate. When we left the room two hours later to spend the night and early morning in silence, we were no longer strangers but companions on a search for deeper meaning. The next three days promise great blessings for the group. Even in this short time there is hope that we will begin in some small way to experience the truth of Joan Chittister’s words to me this morning. She writes:

In community we work out our connectedness to God, to one and other, and to ourselves…In human relationships I learn how to soften my hard spots and how to reconcile and how to care for someone else besides myself. In human relationships I learn that theory is no substitute for love. It is easy to talk about the love of God; it is another thing to practice it…Alone, I am what I am, but in community I have the chance to become everything that I can be. (Wisdom Distilled from the Daily p. 48-49)

I am not saying that major transformation will be achieved during this short sojourn together, but if my hunch is correct, something in each of us will be sparked into being and if we fan the flame, we will find ourselves a few steps further along on the spiritual journey. May it be so for each of us!

It seems a very long time since I finally asked Jan Phillips to come to my hometown to share her creativity and thoughts about evolutionary consciousness. I worried that there would not be enough people to “fill the house.” She’s rather famous now. Recently, however, when I raised that concern in an e-mail message to her (having already committed to bringing her all the way from California), it was the Jan that I have known for almost 50 years that responded. Whatever number we have will be perfect, she said. The fewer there are, the deeper we can go. I’m okay with any size.

So this is it: the week we’ve been waiting for. If there are any “last minute” folks out there who are close enough geographically to join us for a concert and/or a workshop entitled, No Time for Ordinary, check out the Sophia Center for Spirituality website for more information. For those of you too far away to be with us, see below for a little taste of Jan’s thought – from her book, No Ordinary Time.

When I was young, I prayed to be a martyr. I wanted to show God and everyone else that I loved Him enough to die for Him. I wanted to go into battle for Him, be another Joan of Arc, a hero for God’s sake.

Now all that’s changed. I wouldn’t think of dying for God, but am doing my best to live for God – not God as person, but God as Goodness, Justice, Mercy. There are no more lines of separation, only strands of connectedness. My eyes find holiness everywhere, in every living thing, person, in every act of kindness, act of nature, act of grace. Everywhere I look, there God is, looking back. (p. 12)

I found a startling juxtaposition this morning in the first lectionary text – the beginning of the first creation story in Genesis 1:1-19 – and a section of one of our readings under consideration today here at our contemplative “boot camp” experience. The first of this duo is the lyrical description of God’s splendid work of bringing into being the glorious creation that becomes our home. The second is, in part, a recounting of what scientists have discovered over the last quarter-century about the communication between sub-atomic particles which scientist David Bohm explains as “a deeper and more complex level of reality than we experience, an ‘implicate order or unbroken wholeness’ from which all our perceived reality derives…”

One would hope that these amazing discoveries, the fruit of evolution from the beginning of which Genesis speaks this morning, (although only of the first three “days” of the creation), would be the result of a concomitant evolution of both human mind and spirit. “Not so,” writes Constance Fitzgerald, a well-known theologian. In strong critique of our inability or unwillingness to respond to the task of becoming in this glorious home that has been entrusted to us, Fitzgerald says the following,

Our ability to embody our communion with every human person on the earth and our unassailable connectedness with everything living is limited because we have not yet become these symbiotic “selves.” We continue to privilege our personal autonomy and are unable to make the transition from radical individualism to a genuine synergistic community, even though we know intellectually we are inseparable and physically connected to every living being in the universe. Yet the future of the entire earth community is riding on whether we can find a way beyond the limits of our present evolutionary trajectory. (Constance Fitzgerald, From Impasse to Prophetic Hope, 37-38)

There is much work to be done and the time is now, it seems, if we are to pay attention to what we have seen as possible in the coherence of the natural world. Let us think on these things!